Since the 1998-'99 season, when they swept games in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, the Canadiens have earned 18 of a possible 60 points on visits to rinks in Alberta and B.C. They have not won in Calgary since Jan. 5, 2002.

The team was spared a visit to their western wasteland because of last season's truncated schedule.

Galchenyuk is a high-end offensive talent with excellent vision, hockey sense, and playmaking abilities. The 19-year-old is mature beyond his age, but it is his work ethic and drive to be the best that will push him to exceed expectations. In his rookie season, the big center was a Calder Trophy candidate and should improve his offensive production in 2013-14. He needs to improve his first step acceleration, physicality, and defensive zone positioning to be an absolutely dominant type of player. It will take time and experience for him to become an elite NHL center, but he projects as a franchise player and future star in the NHL.

More about sucking…you know who really sucked tonight. Soupy (Boullion). He played his worst game as a pro. Did you see him with a minute left in the game and the goalie out. Not once but twice he just randomly slaps the puck off the boards out of his own end right to a Flames player. Ummm hello, we have our goalie out and were trying to score the tying goal and your just passing the puck off randomly to…no one. I almost destroyed my TV watching him. I think he may have been intoxicated, but I’m not sure? Kind of signified the entire night
\”A cannonading blast from the wing, by Lafleur\”

As I posted earlier, I still only have one comment. Disgusting performance.
No wait, I have more, f-ing pathetic!
Piss poor. Worst team effort I have ver witnessed by the habs and i’ve watched them for 50 years.
I am a supporter of Therrien but not after tonight. Good god man coach. That’s why your there. Get in the GD game. Know who’s playing and know who isn’t. Change your lines up when they obvioulsy are not working. And, actually come up with a PP unit instead of just throwing a line out there. Just awful. Overall complete garbage. I am disgusted.

Was at the game. We lost it because of a big -2 Georges. Both the first two goals were on him. First one he tried to play goalie instead of taking Monahan and leaving shooter to Price. Second one he flopped into the splits and let the puck go to a wide open Baertschi. Since when does the D leave his feet to stop a puck… into the splits. Just brutal. The guy does nothing in particular that well, and has mega mess ups. This is the guy I would be trading. The 4th line was also -2, which means the rest of the team actually played well. The pp goal against was a nice tip through the legs. What can you do. BTW Briere was centering the dd patch line. DD is on thin ice. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him wing on the 4 line next game with Prust on the briere line. Good game overall.

More about sucking…you know who really sucked tonight. Soupy (Boullion). He played his worst game as a pro. Did you see him with a minute left in the game and the goalie out. Not once but twice he just randomly slaps the puck off the boards out of his own end right to a Flames player. Ummm hello, we have our goalie out and were trying to score the tying goal and your just passing the puck off randomly to…no one. I almost destroyed my TV watching him. I think he may have been intoxicated, but I’m not sure? Kind of signified the entire night
“A cannonading blast from the wing, by Lafleur”

Yup, and every other guy who ever played for the habs when he comes back to Montreal for the first time he kills us. Bourque goes home and plays his worst game ever. And he was really good last game against the Flyers. Should have been one of the stars in that game. Tonight, like you said awful.

Price is good enough and if team played somewhat of a defensive system would be a top 5 goalie but with tonight’s effort defensively he will be in bottom half of goalies. I really believe he played his best hockey when Halak was challenging him, he needs to play 50 games per year max,

Price can’t win with even the league’s best in front of him, look at how he buckles in all star games, in Olympic games, heck Price was a could have been should have been and now maybe its time we trade him to the west where he routinely gives up games being an alienated westerner that he is, and we all know what alienated westerners have done to this country…..

We need another Halak. We need bigger defensemen. We gotta stop signing this midget forwards for God’s Sake! Skating fast does not win you games! Only makes you skate fast losing.

Once again Habs not prepared to play, and the coach once again did a horrible job again of managing his bench…before he lays blame on his players he should be looking in the mirror.
His stubbornness will cost this team in the end more than anything else.

Desharnais better pick it up soon, pretty bad contact for a guy who’s invisible against a big hardworking team. Same goes for Briere, although I’ll give him a pass seeing as he’s new. Price played well, the defense were not physical enough. We looked pretty sluggish for most of the game better turn it around tmr in edmonton. Not even gonna get into the Subban penalty, seeing as we did not deserve to be in that game whatsoever.

Price is supposed to be so hot but he is not, never was, washed out as a rookie in his first all star game and never recovered. It’s a shame the owners of the habs want to nickel and dime this team with washed up veterans, too small forwards and wimpy defensemen, apart from PK Subban, really what do have? A small tough guy in Bouilion the cube who couldn’t clear the front of the crease for trying. We have small forwards who can’t crash the net, and then we have the montreal media making excuses that the habs are not designed to beat the western teams. Hello? In order to win a cup you have to win all the games or most of them, including the western swing.

Maybe it is time Montreal fans stay away, don’t buy tickets, show the owners what real hockey fans are about, wanting to watch real hockey, not a team of wimps.

Parros got hurt and we are nothing. Just like last year when Emelin got hurt.

Nuna, one day I’m going to compile all of your posts and publish them as one long roll of stream-of-consciousness prose, partially as an homage to Jack Kerouac’s intended/original format for “On the Road”. But I’ll call it, “On a Roll”. (It’s a double-entendre.)

No way! Price is a top 5 goalie when our defense is healthy and playing properly, he made 3 gave saving stops tonight that could have made the game out of reach. You’re right this team hasn’t been prepared to play in west for 20 years and it continued tn our best players didn’t come to play.

Small player to remember Doug Jarvis, they are useful if overly talented in certain areas of game and used primarily in that role, we have smaller players but skill no better than big average players who at least fill the lanes

I need more ponderous existentialism in my deep space catastrophe films. And ideally a whole lot less Sandra Bullock–though I’ll concede she had a pretty thin script to work with and was handcuffed by a few real clunkers. (“Skies mostly clear with a chance of…” Gahd, spare me.)

While I expect this team to remain ‘competitive’ (read: fair to middlin’) for the duration of this season, it’s becoming apparent that there is a sort of unsolvable jigsaw puzzle on the forward lines, having to make room for all of Gallagher, Desharnais, Gionta, and Briere.

If I understand the math correctly, there will always be one of the first three lines with two of our smaller dudebros on it, which will by default be extremely easy to neutralize by the opposing D–as we are currently witnessing with the DD line.

Shuffle the deck any way you want to, but the bottom line I’m afraid is that we’ve got one li’l dudebro too many.

To everyone complaining about the coaching. Dont you guys realize by now, the coach is, and has been a puppet in Montreal for many years. DD is being continued to be played because of his contract and orders from above. MT knows he sux, but his hand is forced.

Thats why Roy coaches the Avalanche and not the HABS, because he would never be part of an organization that where the coach is told what to do as opposed to what he should be doing.

That is hilarious. Reminded me of a pick up line from a guy who I knew ( he died a couple of years ago ).
“you look like my 1st wife”.
She says “How many times have you been married?”
His answer was “never”.

Subban played a great game but he made 2 critical errors. The penalty was the obvious one but a little earlier during a rare flurry he had an opportunity with a wide open net and a clear shooting lane. All he had to do was fire an easy wrister and the game would have been tied. Instead he went with the exaggerated wind up and sent a slap shot over the broad side of the barn. He’s an amazing talent but he still has things to learn.
I’ve never been thrilled with MT and DD but I really think one of them has to go.Or both. That would work too. They can take Diaz with them. If we are going to lose games I would rather loose with Pateryn and Beaulieu than Diaz and Bouillon.

” Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm ” – Winston Churchill

Call me a hater, troll, whatever. This team will go nowhere with MT behind the bench.

He just doesn’t adjust. He continues to give DD top minutes despite the fact that DD is obviously the worst center on the team at present. He is playing Markov like he wants to kill him before X-mas. He keeps playing Diaz on the bloody PK.

After the last game he went out of his way to tell everyone how he was “rewarding” the players who play the best. Then tonight he goes and gives the DD line the most ice and plays Markov more than P.K.

Reason why philly canned coach so fast is his system of a 1-1-3 offense was away to defensive for his young guns who want to skate and play offense.Laviolette one would think would adapt to situation but I think defense wins games and that’s why he wouldn’t change. I think MT has opposite approach allows a system players like free wheel but to much defensive breakdowns

Something’s not right with DD in the picture, and I hope MB doesn’t wait till his contract ends to fix this. He’s holding his linemates back. Briere should be the one centering Max and some other big winger.

Yeah… I didn’t watch it either. Just checked the final and a big MEH! here we go again. This team can’t beat the lowly Flames, but gets up to play a Boston. So sick of it. Why can’t they play 60 minutes?

Promote the Youth, Support From The Veterans and Remember the Heritage!

I think we need to use this transition season wisely and let Tinordi and Bealieu develop. I’d much rather watch them get burned by rookie mistakes then watch 55,61,26 hang on for dear life. We need to play our young guns big minutes and live with the results so that next year we can contend. I’m sure Beaulieu after 15 games will bring more than 55 or 61 can

On nights like these I wish player contracts all had a base salary of 50percent league average salary and players had to earn the other 50percent based on key performance indicators, to many guys get their millions and never play with same enthusiasm.

3 games does not a season make, but the same deficiencies and areas of concern last year during the stretch run are still too evident.
Lack of size- three small forwards and one defense – still is an issue, defense is porous and soft and yes goaltending is still shaky. I mean Joey MacDonald played better.
We are still years away, the addition of Parros and Murray and maybe the return of Emelin may help but we will be a .500 team, scoring late goals to make games interesting.
We need to shed some bodies- DD, Gionta,Markov, should be traded or not resigned. They are small, frail and old and should not be part of the future.
Pax needs size with him, bring the kids up and let them develop.
The future looks bright but the present will be tough to take.

Habs looked old, lazy & stupid. They’ll look that waY against the Oil too.
You guys been watching some other teams play? Like Colorado last night? Habs aren’t even on the same page as most of the teams in the league.
Only hope is the Als and that’s clutching at straws! How many days before Jays ST ?

you guys are all starting to sound like Leaf fans! This morning on 590 the Fan, commentators are yapping about how bad Kadri and Jake Gardiner are and that Kadri is given too much ice time and Gardiner should be traded.

Give this team a chance, they’ve played 3 flippin’ games! They’re a 5th or 6th place team and 2-3 years away from being good. So ride the bus and check out the scenery along the way. Deep breathe!

2-3 years away? Are you frigging kidding? We can’t rebuild in perpetuity. Does Detroit re-build? Does Boston? No! Get a grip this is not about a team rebuilding. This is just a team that is built completely wrong.

That’s the lines for Edmonton if we want to win and send messages. A part of me dies every time 55 is on a PP and I do not understand why DD is forcing Briere a more accomplished center to the wing. Also, PK and The Chuk E cheese line will make this non-playoff season very entertaining.

At the 10 minute mark after watching habs totally out skated and just lucky not have been down 2 or 3 goals I think that is excellent time for a coach to call a timeout and grill his players give them all some smelling salts, do something, not sure if Mr T has that special dynamic to think outside box and outsmart other teams coach

Was out and had to PVR the game, just got finished. This team made way too many mistakes in their own end. It is so frustrating to watch. If they are going to waste Beaulieu’s development by having him as the call-up that sits in the pressbox, let him play tomorrow night or else bring up another AHL DMan.

The D is a mess. Not one single pairing is stable. Thank God most of them are UFA. Tinordi is better off in Hamilton than playing his wrong side. MB needed to get a temporary replacement for Emelin and blew it.

Price strong. .865 save percentage. Yes, he had no d on the first two goals, but on the third we need that save. Get down already, why are you still standing up while ths shot is already enroute. Plekanec’s line good? They were invisible. So bad in fact they benched Bourque for awhile and tried other wingers.

The third goal was a defection! He had no help tonight. Even the commentators said Price didn’t have a chance on any of the goals. Price has to be better this year but thus far I like what I see out of him.

Going to take 10 games to evaluate properly. If things dont go well by then Im sure MB will react. Let the month play out. Take some positives. This kid line fun to watch. PK is a work horse. Patience.

There’s certain guys who’s only ticket to the NHL is agitating. PK seems to think he needs to do that for some reason… he’s a Norris trophy winner. He needs to start acting like it and cut that s*** out.
I wouldn’t care if he had a hat trick tonight he needs to stop doing that. I don’t know if what he was doing on that penalty was out of frustration or if it was agitating looking for a reaction to draw a penalty but either way it was STUPID. He gets away with 99% of the stuff he does but it just so happens he got caught with 1:39 left in the game and it cost his team a chance to win.
Enough.